'Power to communities': Chicago considers city-owned grocery store to address 'food deserts' after giants like Walmart and Whole Foods shutter stores

About 3% of humans are born psychpaths (roughly: they have no empathy hence only care about themselves).

One would naivelly expect that only caring about yourself would be a winning strategy from a genetics point of view and hence over time the whole of Manking would have become psychopaths as the ones with such a natural advantage were more successful at surviving and reproducing than the others, yet that's not at all the case and only a small fraction of people are born psychopaths.

My personal explanation for that is that psychopathic behaviour is only a genetic advantage if most people around are not that - or, transposed to to economic terms, being a rent-seeker only works if most people are producers and doens't at all work when most people are rent-seekers.

I expect that in our evolutionary past, whenever a tribe/group had too many psychopaths without some kind of mechanism to kick them out or force them into cooperative mode, it eventually collapsed and ended up removed from the genetic pool hence why in millions of years of evolution the supposed superior behaviour of caring only about yourself didn't end up dominating the human genetic pool - the "threading of the needle" for the survival psychopathy as a behavioural trait in the gene pool was a balance between that behaviour expressing itself often enough to reproduce and remain in the gene pool and not so much that there were too many such individuals in a group causing it to collapse.

Is city ownership socialist though?

Not necessarily. That would turn it into something more like a public utility than like a for-profit business.

I mean, it's "not socialism" when the fire department or the power utility aren't private, for-profit corporations, but it is if the grocery store is? LOL

This is true. I don’t know why you’re being downvoted.

You're right. They should tax 100% of my income and give me a weekly grocery credit!

Oh, and it won't be enough to buy a nice steak more than once a week. Even though I have a very prestigious position at my job, I'm given the same grocery allowance as everyone else

As other people have pointed out, big companies target an area and set about establishing a monopoly using $$$

Then they realise “huh. There’s not so much profit here in Assfuck, Montana after all.” And make some lame excuse (theft) to pull out.

Citizens get fucked because : capitalism.

Do you think 6500 is a low number? It's not like each food desert affects only one person each. More likely than not, each is affecting more than a thousand people. Especially in a population dense area like Chicago. We are talking millions of people living in food deserts.

Also, after reading a bunch of your comments, I'm not sure you are fully aware of what a food desert is. But hey, that's Capitalism.

Capitalism has been very successful... if you don't count the poor and the hungry.

Gotcha.

Lol you contradicted yourself

It doesn't affect me, so fuck who it does affect.

Nice, dude.

There are less than 6500 food deserts in the country.

If you can't walk to nearest store within 15 minutes, you live in food desert. Using PT counts as walking.

I agree. I don’t think people realise how many “food deserts” there were even a hundred years ago, let alone further back. They certainly don’t realise how many food deserts there are in countries which don’t practise capitalism, or have not in the past.

I agree. At the end of the day it's a business. But if two companies offer similar products go with the employee owned company.

The main thing about is decision making structure. Because employee or community owned stores are owned by the users. It means the end users have power over what is offered. As opposed to big box in which case it is non local non user shareholders.

Why give a private entity money when you can just do it publicly? And in the process not sell only what's profitable rather than what provides good health to residents. The existing mini-marts and what not are selling what's profitable (non-perishable processed food).

That’s not at all feasible for places with long, cold winters, or southwest areas without enough water, among others.

I wonder how people in these areas survived without grocery stores, then.

and yet people in all of those places manage to grow their own food. humans are a resilient and adaptable species. but anyway, this is a tangent. even if the land has a playground on it, it doesn't matter. people can decide how to use a blank space in a neighborhood. if food grows well there, then grow food. if not, make it a farmers market and people can bring the food there. the point is....we shouldn't pave over the earth and then complain about food deserts.

Why do you think these examples are analogous? The stores in the towns described in the articles you linked didn’t shut down because of poverty or crime. In the examples you provided, collective supermarkets seem to be a good fit. Contrast this with the Chicago mayor, who cites poverty. If people can’t afford food anyway, and the business is going to face sky high theft, the plan doesn’t make sense. Cut out the middle man and just send poor people food. It would cost far less than trying to set up supermarkets from scratch and running them at a loss in perpetuity. Plus it means helping poor people, rather than forcing them to shop lift if they’re hungry.

It sounds like you do have a prejudice against those store chains. Those stores were closed because there was an insanely stupid amount of theft.

Because of the exorbitant amount of theft at those locations.